Body and Blood of Christ Corpus Christi Year A 2023

Title

I am the living bread that came down from heaven

Outline

Today a momentous and yet familiar solemnity

We all covered it somewhere in RCIA, CCD, or any good formation program - or you should if you are on the road

But when I was reflecting on this homily, I though I would be autobiographical, partly to show that God works through our partial understandings and through people who do not believe in what they quote and partially to call us ever onward into the depths of the mystery.

It was I, and likely you, whom he “fed [you] with manna”

For me it was more like a 25 year trip from birth, when God took my dedication and said “I’ll take him,” thought my upbringing in the Plymouth Brethren, in a devout family indeed, but which had its own wilderness and afflictions, making “the Lord’s Supper” the center of my life. I knew that the loaf or hard roll on the table and the glass of wine were the center of worship. I was told that they were symbol, but as I grew I could accept that they were mere symbol - even Old Testament offering parts were treated reverently and these had likewise at least been set aside. I knew in my heart they were supposed to be more than bread and wine. I was saddened knowing that they were poured down the sink or tossed in the trash after the Morning Meeting. But they were my weekly manna, and likely kept me from many a seraph serpent and scorpion as I traveled through an emotional wilderness at times, going more and more deeply into the scriptures, but with movements all around me in the evangelical world that would eventually go sour.

The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?

In my seminary years I broke with Dispensationalism and became gospel centered. It was indeed Jesus, participation in Jesus that I was seeking. We remained in the Brethren, but in graduate school I was using the BCP 1611 devotionally. I knew that the worship of the first Christian communities used those Psalms. While teaching at my first job, which was in Germany, I also experienced a contemplative charismatic renewal and fit with the great spiritual tradition readings I had discovered though God’s grace. There is a corporate participation in Christ - he is one but we are all in him. And somehow that bread and that cup are the means to that unity.

I also realized that “Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.” If we are one with him, we are one with one another. We explored community movements, both contemporary and Anabaptist, who were in turn influenced by the Devotio Moderna and Third Order Franscicans. And yet I was in the Protestant world that is a body splitting apart with many scattered, but ultimately failing, attempts to gets some parts back together. I knew psychology too well to ever take this unity as merely “spiritual.”

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven”

While teaching in Germany I had to teach John’s Gospel and used in my prep Fr Raymond Brown’s commentary. Now Fr. Brown, whom I did not call Father yet, was a gentle, kind, and caring man as well as a great scholar. His arguments convinced me that Jesus meant just what he said, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” How it happened I did not have words for, but that it happened I had the Word himself’s word for.

God took us into the Episcopal Church as founding faculty of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry. Imagine my shock when I discovered that the main supporting parish did not celebrate Eucharist weekly, but rather alternated with Morning Prayer! Though his grand providence God allowed me to be ordained an Episcopal priest three years later and the next summer I went across the river to the National Catholic Charismatic Conference for Priests and Deacons in Steubenville. That was the year when first we non-Catholics could no longer use a parallel altar, but had to physically separate from the tent and our Catholic brethren. We were one in that bread and wine, one body in Christ, ripped apart, feeling pain and shedding tears on both sides of the division.

I prayed for years that ecumenical discussions would be fruitful and yet saw clearly that the Episcopal Church was moving away from, not closer to the barque of Peter. And yet ACNA never attracted me, although I had friends there, for they seemed drawn to Geneva and not to the body and blood of Christ.

It was John Michael Talbot’s Brothers and Sisters of Charity that God used to push me across the channel, for they fully accepted my monastic side and loved me, and I knew that God called me to them, so I said, “I will suck it up and be part of them and not share communion” and God said, “But why not?” And that plus some divine interventions got me to the Ordinariate - I was ordained priest about 18 months after that “Why not?” from God.

[Brothers and] Sisters, you and I are still on a journey

We have continued to read and learn, but whether it be Eastern Church literature or Western Church, British or Italian, there is always a further in and a high up. Jesus meant what he said, so we treat the body and blood as the body and blood of Christ, but we will still be learning and deepening our love until we experience it at the wedding banquet of the lamb.

That is why I so rejoiced upon retirement from Walsingham to received a portable altar and even more upon moving to Georgetown to have my own chapel where my daily prayers are made in front of the tabernacle, the body and blood of our Lord.

That is why Fr Hai down the road says he cannot live as a priest without his holy hour and why he gives all parish staff time for a holy hour at parish expense.

That is why we lift high the Monstrance and process with it, perhaps with less ceremony than I saw in Innsbruck, but with the same feeling.

“Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” - and that is where I want to remain, getting every closer, until I am fully one with him in the Beatific vision.

I trust that that is also your desire as well

Readings

Catholic Daily Readings 6-11-2023: Body and Blood of Christ

FIRST READING

Deuteronomy 8:2–3, 14b–16a

2 Remember how for these forty years the LORD, your God, has directed all your journeying in the wilderness, so as to test you by affliction, to know what was in your heart: to keep his commandments, or not. 3 He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you with manna, a food unknown to you and your ancestors, so you might know that it is not by bread alone that people live, but by all that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD.

14 you then become haughty of heart and forget the LORD, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that house of slavery; 15 he guided you through the vast and terrible wilderness with its saraph serpents and scorpions, its parched and waterless ground; he brought forth water for you from the flinty rock 16 and fed you in the wilderness with manna, a food unknown to your ancestors, that he might afflict you and test you, but also make you prosperous in the end.

Catholic Daily Readings 6-11-2023: Body and Blood of Christ

RESPONSE

Psalm 147:12

12 Glorify the LORD, Jerusalem;

Zion, offer praise to your God,

PSALM

Psalm 147:12–15, 19–20

12 Glorify the LORD, Jerusalem;

Zion, offer praise to your God,

13 For he has strengthened the bars of your gates,

blessed your children within you.

14 He brings peace to your borders,

and satisfies you with finest wheat.

15 He sends his command to earth;

his word runs swiftly!

19 He proclaims his word to Jacob,

his statutes and laws to Israel.

20 He has not done this for any other nation;

of such laws they know nothing.

Hallelujah!

Catholic Daily Readings 6-11-2023: Body and Blood of Christ

SECOND READING

1 Corinthians 10:16–17

16 The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? 17 Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.

Catholic Daily Readings 6-11-2023: Body and Blood of Christ

GOSPEL ACCLAMATION

John 6:51

51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”

GOSPEL

John 6:51–58

51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”

52 The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us [his] flesh to eat?” 53 Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”

Notes

Catholic Daily Readings 6-11-2023: Body and Blood of Christ

SUNDAY, JUNE 11, 2023 | ORDINARY TIME

BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST

In dioceses where The Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ is observed on Sunday.

YEAR A | ROMAN MISSAL | LECTIONARY

On the same date: 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time

First Reading Deuteronomy 8:2–3, 14b–16a

Response Psalm 147:12

Psalm Psalm 147:12–15, 19–20

Second Reading 1 Corinthians 10:16–17

Gospel Acclamation John 6:51

Gospel John 6:51–58

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